The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency recently issued a contract request for query-based access to a commercial license plate reader database. We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with ICE seeking information on the contract, as well as any internal training materials, policy memos, and documents related to how ICE agents plan to use the commercial database and LPR data.

Election security is the process of anticipating and responding to ever-evolving threats in an environment where voter confidence can be swayed just as much by perception as reality. Recent reports only provide a snapshot of where states fall short in their security efforts. Some states, like Colorado, Illinois, Rhode Island, Washington, and West Virginia, are already on their way to improving their election security grade.

Citing the potential threat to law enforcement and the general public, correctional facility officials have pushed for the FCC to address the issue of contraband phone use in prisons. Now, the FCC is considering a mandate for hard kill switches on all wireless devices. This proposal would provide correctional facility officers with the ability to permanently disable (or “brick”) a phone upon request. CDT has joined our colleagues at the EFF in opposing this proposal and expressing our concerns in an ex parte filing to the FCC.

CDT will bring together VPN providers, privacy and consumer advocates, technical experts, and other stakeholders focused on internet infrastructure to create best practices and an enforceable code of conduct for protecting user data with VPNs.

CDT’s Tech Talk is a podcast where we dish on tech and Internet policy, while also explaining what these policies mean to our daily lives. In this episode, we talk about liability and the Internet of Things – who should be held accountable if something goes seriously wrong? We also look into ICE’s use of a massive license plate reader database and address what the public needs to know.

US v Microsoft has drawn a lot of interest from many quarters. Amicus briefs filed in the case raise at least four important questions the Supreme Court should address. We discuss the answers to these questions, and more, in this blog from Greg Nojeim posted with the SCOTUSBlog.

It’s official: Section 702 of FISA has been extended until 2023. We hope that the forthcoming information will support more substantive reform when Congress revisits the law six years from now, if not sooner.

On February 2, CDT filed an amicus brief in Alasaad v. Nielsen arguing that warrantless, suspicionless border searches of electronic devices such as laptops and cell phones violate the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution. Digital—we argue—is different, and the need to address these border searches is pressing because digital content is becoming far more prevalent.

When data becomes divorced from its human origins, it loses context and disassociates companies from their actions – it enables decisions that defy expectations and ethics. Tech companies have experienced widespread backlash as a consequence of this disconnect. Fitness social network Strava is the latest example, after the company publicly released a heat map of aggregate user locations that inadvertently revealed U.S. military bases and personnel around the world.